"Pam says
if you subtracted The Freemantle... "Pam says
if you subtracted The Freemantle Company buildings
from the StPaul skyline, it would look like Des
Moines in nineteen seventy-two"Am I supposed to believe that
a guy who organized that much work couldn't
554
organize some plane tickets and two dozen hotel
rooms? Especially when he could reach out to an
office staff that would absolutely love to hear
from him?"
"They don't
"Are you getting pissed?"
"NoThe old anger was back, wanting
to raise its voice until it was shouting as loud
as Axl Rose on The BoneI raised my fingers to a
spot just over my right eye, where a headache was
starting upThere would be no painting for me
today, and it was Wireman's faultWireman was to
blameFor one moment I wished him
denim chanel bag blindNot just
half-blind but blind blind, and realized I could
paint him that wayAt that the anger collapsed
Wireman saw my hand go to my head and let up a
little"Look, most of the people she's contacted
unofficially have already said hell yes, of course,
they'd love toYour old line foreman Angel
Slobotnik told Pam he'd bring you a jar of pickles
She said he sounded thrilled
"Not pickles, pickled eggs," I said, and Big
Ainge's broad, flat, smiling face was for a moment
almost close enough to touchAngel, who had been
555
right there beside me for twenty years, until a
major heart attack sidelined himAngel, whose
most common response to any request, no matter how
seemingly outrageous, was Can do, boss
"Pam and I made the flight
discount hermes arrangements," Wireman
said"Not just for the people from Minneapolis-St
Paul, but from other places, as well He tapped
the brochure"The Air France and Delta flights in
here are real, and your daughter Melinda is really
booked on emShe knows what's going onThey're only waiting to be officially
invitedIlse wanted to call you, and Pam told her
to waitShe says you have to pull the trigger on
this, and whatever she may have been wrong about
in the course of your marriage, muchacho, she's
right about that
"All right," I saidNow I want to talk to you about the
lecture
"If you do a bunk on the lecture, you'll find it
twice as hard to go to the opening-night party-"
I looked at him incredulously"You disagree?"
556
"Do a bunk?" I
dior monogram bag asked"Do a bunk? What the fuck is
that?"
"To cut and run," he said, sounding slightly
defensiveSee for instance Evelyn
Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen, 1952
"See my ass and your face," I said"Edgar
Freemantle, present day
He flipped me the bird, and just like that we were
mostly okay again
"You sent Pam the pictures, didn't you? You sent
her the JPEG file
"How did she react?"
"She was blown away, muchacho
I sat silently, trying to imagine Pam blown away
I could do it, but the face I saw lighting up in
surprise and wonder was a younger faceIt had
been quite a few years since I'd been able to
generate that sort of wind
Elizabeth was dozing off, but her hair was flying
against her cheeks and she pawed at them like a
woman
gucci backpack troubled by insectsI got up, took an
elastic from the pouch on the arm of her
wheelchair - there was always a good supply of
557
them, in many bright colors - and pulled her hair
back into a horsetailThe memories of doing this
for Melinda and Ilse were sweet and terrible
"So how do I do it?" I askedI was holding my
palm on the side of Elizabeth's head, feeling the
smoothness of her hair as I had often felt the
smoothness of my daughters' after it had been
shampooed; when memory takes its strongest hold,
our own bodies become ghosts, haunting us with the
gestures of our younger selves"How do I talk
about a process that's at least partially
supernatural?"
ThereThe root of the matter
Yet Wireman looked calm"Edgar!" he
fendi b belt black leather exclaime